Читать книгу Vocabulary for the Common Core - Robert J Marzano - Страница 9
Оглавление2
A Six-Step Process for Vocabulary Instruction
Vocabulary knowledge develops gradually over time. Therefore, vocabulary instruction should be thought of as a process—not a singular event. The following depiction is a useful way of thinking about vocabulary development.
The first few times we encounter an unknown word, we create a container for that word in our brains. As we encounter the word more and more, we gradually fill up that container with bits of knowledge about the word: what it means, how to pronounce it, how to spell it, how it is used in sentences, what other words are normally used with it, its role in sentences, how often it is used, and how it is related to other words (Nation, 1990), among other things. Words whose containers are mostly full are generally the ones we use in our speech and writing. Words whose containers are half full or less are those we understand but don’t use. Mostly empty containers contain words we profess not to know but are still able to answer questions about or distinguish between their correct and incorrect usage. Francis Durso and Wendelyn Shore (1991) and Mary Curtis (1987) found that even when people reported that a word was unknown, they were able to identify sentences in which it was used correctly, correctly identify its synonyms, and correctly answer questions about it.
The metaphor of words as containers is useful because it highlights the fact that direct vocabulary instruction does not necessarily have to produce in-depth understanding of vocabulary terms to be useful. Marzano (2004) stated that “the goal of direct vocabulary instruction is to provide students with a surface-level, not an in-depth, understanding of vocabulary terms” (p. 120). Similarly, Nagy and Herman (1987) wrote:
Although a strong case can be made for rich, knowledge-based vocabulary instruction, one should not underestimate the possible benefits of less intensive instruction…. One should not underestimate the value of any meaningful encounter with a word, even if the information gained from the one encounter is relatively small. (pp. 31–32)
Useful guidelines for vocabulary instruction are implicit in these findings. If time is available to provide an in-depth understanding of vocabulary words to students, teachers should by all means encourage as much learning as possible. However, if only a limited amount of time is available, teachers should not neglect direct vocabulary instruction because they are only able to provide a surface-level understanding of the terms. Even brief instructional activities aimed at providing an initial surface-level understanding might help students form a “cup” or container for a word that allows them to connect future learning to that word.
Chapter 1 described elements of effective vocabulary instruction from research and theory. In this chapter, we describe a six-step process for vocabulary instruction based on that research and theory. This process has its own unique body of research supporting its effectiveness (Dunn, Bonner, & Huske, 2007; Gifford & Gore, 2008; Haystead & Marzano, 2009; Marzano, 2005, 2006). The first study supporting the utility of the six-step process (called “Building Academic Vocabulary” or BAV) was completed in 2005 (Marzano, 2005). During the 2004–2005 school year, 11 schools, 118 teachers, and 2,683 students participated in an evaluation study of the BAV process for vocabulary instruction. The study found that “students who participated in the BAV program exhibited greater ability to read and understand grade-appropriate materials in mathematics, science, and general literacy than their counterparts who did not participate in the program” (Marzano, 2006, p. 1). Furthermore, the study found that the BAV program was particularly effective for students who were English learners or who qualified for free and reduced lunch (indicating low socioeconomic status). Given Hart and Risley’s (1995, 2003) previously reviewed conclusion that students from low SES families typically have smaller vocabularies than other students, these findings are particularly compelling.
Additionally, Haystead and Marzano (2009) synthesized the results of a number of studies conducted by classroom teachers on the effectiveness of the six-step process for vocabulary instruction. They found that the process was associated with an effect size of 0.51, which is associated with a gain of 20 percentile points. In other words, a student at the 50th percentile whose teacher used the six-step process for vocabulary instruction would be expected to improve to the 70th percentile, compared to a student whose teacher did not use the process. These findings indicate that the process can be effective in increasing vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension for a variety of students in a variety of school situations.
The six steps of the vocabulary instruction process are as follows:
1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.
2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the term or phrase.
4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.
5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.
6. Involve students periodically in games that allow them to play with terms.
The process is designed to be used with students of all ages and works equally well in self-contained classrooms (usually at the elementary level where one teacher teaches every subject) or in content-specific classes (as are usually used at the middle and high school levels). Teachers can devote as much or as little time to each step as they have available. As described previously, even surface-level knowledge of words is useful to students. Here, we describe and exemplify each step.
Step 1: Provide a Description, Explanation, or Example of the New Term
The first step involves providing a description, explanation, or example of the term for students. Before you can do that, however, you must determine what students already know. To verify this information, a teacher can simply ask, “What do you think you know about this term?” For example, an eighth-grade mathematics teacher asks students what they know about the term function. The students offer the following comments:
• A function is a kind of event. My mom organizes social functions for her ladies’ club.
• People often say that something “is a function of” something else. My dad says that “the quality of a meal is a function of how hungry you are.”
• A function is what a person does. My uncle functions as the president of our HOA.
• A function is arch-shaped. My brother graphs them on his calculator.
As students reply, the teacher listens for accurate knowledge as well as misconceptions. Accurate knowledge that students already have about a term can be incorporated into the teacher’s subsequent description and explanation of the term. If students have misconceptions about a term, the teacher can correct and clarify these in her explanation of the term. From the student comments, the teacher determines that students have accurate knowledge about different meanings attached to the term function (an event, a relationship, a role) and realizes that she needs to help them focus on the mathematical meaning of “a relationship between two measurements.” She also notes that some students understand that functions can be expressed visually by graphing them but recognizes the misconception that all functions’ graphs are arch-shaped. She decides to refer back to the second comment about “the quality of a meal being a function of how hungry you are” and build on it when she gives examples of different real-world situations expressed by functions.
Once the baseline for student understanding is set, the teacher can begin the six-step process by providing a description for the term.
Definition vs. Description
Providing students with information about a word’s meaning is an integral part of direct vocabulary instruction. Unfortunately, many teachers rely on dictionary definitions for this purpose. This practice is ineffective because the main goal of a dictionary definition is not necessarily to provide the clearest possible explanation for a word. In fact, Sidney Landau (1984) pointed out that one of the most important considerations when writing dictionary definitions is space. Definitions in dictionaries are typically designed to take up as little space as possible, in order to accommodate the large number of words that need to be included.
Additionally, dictionary definitions are designed using a classical structure that classifies, rather than explains, each concept. Stahl (1999) wrote, “There is a form for a definition, dating back to Aristotle, in which the definition first identifies which class (genus) the word belongs to, and then how that word differs from other members of its class (differentia)” (p. 17). For example, the DK Merriam-Webster Children’s Dictionary (2008) defines jeans as “pants [class] made of denim [differentiation]” (p. 450) and countdown as “the process [class] of subtracting the time remaining before an event [differentiation]” (p. 202). Because of this structure, Snow (1990) found that students’ ability to define words depended more on their understanding of the structure of a definition than on their actual understanding of a word.
Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan (2002) suggested that descriptions are more effective than definitions. Descriptions explain and exemplify words, often by using the words in sentences or explaining the contexts in which a word commonly appears. The Collins COBUILD Illustrated Basic Dictionary (Roehr & Carroll, 2010) represents one effort to supply students with descriptions rather than definitions. Table 2.1 illustrates the difference between descriptions found in the COBUILD dictionary and definitions from the DK children’s dictionary (2008).
Table 2.1: Descriptions vs. Definitions
| Definition in DK Merriam-Webster Children’s Dictionary (2008) | Description in Collins COBUILD Illustrated Basic Dictionary (Roehr & Carroll, 2010) | |
| abrupt | Happening without warning | An abrupt change or action is very sudden, often in a way that is unpleasant. |
| dignity | The quality or state of being worthy of honor and respect | If someone behaves or moves with dignity, they are serious, calm, and controlled. |
| inclined | Having a desire | If you say that you are inclined to have a particular opinion, you mean that you have this opinion, but you do not feel strongly about it. |
| overlook | To fail to see | If you overlook a fact or a problem, you do not notice it. |
| threat | The act of showing an intention to do harm | If you make a threat against someone, you say that something bad will happen to them if they do not do what you want. |
Descriptions, such as those shown in the right column of table 2.1, help students gain a clear understanding of what a word means and how it is generally used. Definitions, on the other hand, can often be confusing or lead students to infer incorrect meanings for words. For example, based solely on the dictionary definition for abrupt (from table 2.1) a student might compose sentences such as the following:
• Ben’s surprise party was abrupt.
• The clown jumped out of the cake abruptly.
• Ben’s abrupt gift of an Xbox 360 made all the children crowd around excitedly.
Technically, these sentences use the word abrupt to mean “happening without warning,” but they also show that this student has failed to capture the usually negative connotations associated with the word. The description in table 2.1 highlights that aspect of the word, explaining that abrupt actions or events can often be unpleasant.
Explaining Features of Words
Effective description and explanation of a term involve helping students understand the important features of a word. For example, a word’s part of speech (noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and so on) is one of its important features. Other important features may depend on who or what the word refers to. For example, words that refer to people have different key features than words that refer to events. Table 2.2 shows seven types of words with accompanying questions that teachers can ask students to draw out key features for each word type; these types are not meant to be definitive but rather to help teachers and students think about words in various ways. This list is a simplified version of Marzano’s (2004) synthesis of vocabulary research (Marzano & Marzano, 1988; Stahl, 1999) and artificial intelligence research (Fellbaum, 1998; Miller, 1995) on various types of words.
Table 2.2: Features of Different Types of Words
| Types | Questions About Key Features |
| People(for example, author, character, villain, narrator, guest speaker, host, hostess, film director, political cartoonist) | 1. What actions does this kind of person perform?2. What is required to become this kind of person?3. What physical or psychological characteristics does this kind of person have? |
| Events(for example, play, interview, simulation, chance event) | 1. What people are associated with this kind of event?2. What process or actions are associated with this kind of event?3. What equipment, materials, resources, or contexts are associated with this kind of event?4. What setting is associated with this kind of event?5. What causes and consequences are associated with this kind of event? |
| Intellectual, artistic, or cognitive products(for example, essay, argument, tessellation, proof, model) | 1. What process is associated with this kind of product?2. What purpose is associated with this kind of product?3. What people are associated with this kind of product?4. What equipment is associated with this kind of product? |
| Mental actions(for example, revise, edit, reflect, problem solve, prove) | 1. What process is associated with this kind of mental action?2. What people are associated with this kind of mental action?3. What location is associated with this kind of mental action?4. What causes or consequences are associated with this kind of mental action? |
| Social/societal groups, institutions, or organizations(for example, audience, Modern Language Association, American Psychological Association, control group, representative sample, population) | 1. What purpose is associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization?2. What people are associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization?3. What setting is associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization? |
| Shapes/direction/position(for example, order of events, introduction, conclusion, polygon, coordinate plane, circumference, data distribution) | 1. What physical features are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position?2. What uses are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position?3. What reference points are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position? |
| Quantities/amounts/measurements(for example, time frame, pacing, Roman numeral, cardinal number, greater than [>], function) | 1. What relationships are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?2. What referents are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement? |
Source: Adapted from Marzano, 2004, pp. 81–84.
If a teacher was trying to explain the term function to her students, she might decide that the term fits best in the type quantities/amounts/measurements. In table 2.2, there are two questions for quantities/amounts/measurements:
1. What relationships are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?
2. What referents are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?
A teacher could use these questions to frame the class discussion of the term function. The teacher begins by explaining that a function expresses a relationship between two measurements. As one measurement changes, it affects the other measurement. The teacher then explains that different functions express different types of relationships: for example, linear functions refer to different kinds of relationships than quadratic functions.
Providing Examples
Description and explanation of a term must be accompanied by examples, such as the following:
• Experiences (field trips or guest speakers)
• Stories (personal experiences with the term)
• Images (videos, descriptions of mental pictures, or drawings)
• Drama (skits or pantomimes)
• Current events related to the term (news stories or magazine articles)
These techniques involve both linguistic and nonlinguistic ways of interacting with a term. Depending on the amount of time a teacher has, each of these types of examples can be extensive or brief. For instance, to highlight the first feature of function that the teacher identified (a function expresses a relationship between two measurements), the teacher tells students a story about how her mom taught her to cook rice. She explains that for every cup of rice, she had to add two cups of water, so two cups of rice needed four cups of water, three cups of rice needed six cups of water, and so on. She could visually graph the relationship between how many cups of water are needed for a specific number of cups of rice, as in figure 2.1, explaining that it is called a linear function because it creates a line on the graph.
Figure 2.1: Example of a linear function.
To highlight the other feature of function that she identified as important (different functions express different types of relationships), the teacher first reminds students of the phrase “the quality of the food is a function of how hungry you are” from their previous discussion and points out that the phrase means that the hungrier you are, the better food tastes. This approach requires relatively little time. If the teacher has more time, she could play a video that shows the frequency of sound waves at different pitches, pointing out that as the frequency increases, so does the pitch. Finally, she might ask students to mentally picture a group of basketball players lined up according to height and ask them to guess which ones weigh the most.
In summary, step 1 involves describing and explaining the important features of a term to students after determining what students already know about the term. Description and explanation of each important feature should be accompanied by examples of that feature. Depending on the amount of time a teacher wishes to spend in this first step, the examples can be abbreviated or more in depth.
Step 2: Ask Students to Restate the Description, Explanation, or Example in Their Own Words
Steps 2 and 3 of the process ask students to respond to the teacher’s description, explanation, or example of a new term by expressing it in their own way, both linguistically (step 2) and nonlinguistically (step 3). These steps are crucial to vocabulary learning because they ask students to actively process the new information provided by the teacher in step 1.
In step 2, the teacher asks students to record their own descriptions, explanations, or examples in their vocabulary notebooks. It is important that students do not simply copy the teacher’s description but instead think about how they would describe the new term and consider situations or circumstances in their own lives that exemplify the term. For example, a student defining the term function might write, “A function tells how one group of numbers is matched up with another group of numbers.” Another student might write, “Functions tell what happens to a measurement when another measurement changes.” At this stage, students’ descriptions and explanations may be rudimentary. This initial simplicity is to be expected and, as long as major errors or misconceptions are avoided, is acceptable during this step. As students explore a word and learn more about it, they can return to their initial explanations to refine, clarify, and add to them (this revision process is further explained in step 4).
Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Representations
Within their framework of dual coding theory, Mark Sadoski and Allan Paivio (2001) suggested that information is stored in the brain in two forms: logogens and imagens. Logogens are storage packages that use language; imagens are storage packets that use pictures or images. For example, information about the vocabulary word narrator could be stored in both ways. A logogen might contain sentences that use the word, other words related to the word, titles of stories or plays that feature a prominent narrator, or other language-based information, such as that shown in figure 2.2 (page 20).
In contrast, a student’s imagens would contain image-based information about the word narrator. These images are often very rich and might include sounds and smells associated with a concept, in addition to mental pictures. Imagens will be discussed more fully in step 3.
Notice that in figure 2.2, each bit of information is connected to other bits of information. This is referred to by linguists as a propositional or semantic network (Clark & Clark, 1977; Kintsch, 1974, 1979; Tulving, 1972; van Dijk, 1977, 1980; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Over time, as students accumulate experiences and store them in propositional networks, the networks become increasingly generalized (Tulving, 1972). For example, a student who has seen Our Town performed might associate the word narrator with that particular experience until he or she sees A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which also features a narrator figure. Then, the same student might hear or see a musical piece with narration such as Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra or Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals. As his or her experience broadens, the information that the student attaches to the idea of narrator becomes more generalized.
Figure 2.2: Language-based information (logogens) for the word narrator.
As noted previously, step 2 focuses on the linguistic side of description and explanation; students create logogens for a term by describing, explaining, and exemplifying it in their own words. If students have trouble formulating their own descriptions, explanations, or examples of a term, the teacher can help in several ways. Perhaps the simplest is to offer further description and explanation to the students. The teacher might ask questions that prompt the student to think of examples from his or her own life that exemplify the term. Additionally, the teacher could ask students to form pairs or small groups to discuss the term and share examples of it in their own lives. If a student is still stuck, the teacher might ask him or her to complete step 3 (creating a nonlinguistic representation for the term) before returning to write a linguistic description of the word.
Vocabulary Notebooks
Vocabulary notebooks are a place where students can record and revise information about vocabulary terms. Many teachers and schools ask students to keep academic notebooks in which they record information related not only to vocabulary but to all the information presented in their classes. Whether students keep academic notebooks or vocabulary notebooks (or a combination of both), the purpose is the same: students record new information using words and images and return to revise and augment that information as their knowledge about a topic or term grows and deepens. Research has shown that the use of notebooks positively affects student achievement (Dunn et al., 2007; Gifford & Gore, 2008; Marzano, 2005, 2006).
Vocabulary notebooks can be created and organized in various ways. We recommend that the area (which may be a quarter-page, a third of a page, a half-page, or a whole page) for each vocabulary term include a place to record the following elements:
• The term
• The academic subject the term is associated with, if applicable (for example, ELA or mathematics)
• The category or measurement topic (discussed in chapter 3) the term is associated with (for example, Transform, Themes and Central Ideas, or Shapes)
• The student’s current level of understanding of the term (for example, 4, 3, 2, 1)
• The student’s linguistic description of the term
• The student’s nonlinguistic representation of the term
• Words related to the term, such as synonyms or antonyms
Figure 2.3 shows one example of a vocabulary notebook page. Visit MarzanoResources.com/common core for a reproducible version of this figure.
Figure 2.3: Sample vocabulary notebook page.
The level of understanding indicator for each term is based on Marzano and Pickering’s (2005) four-point scale for self-evaluation of knowledge of vocabulary terms:
| 4 | I understand even more about the term than I was taught. |
| 3 | I understand the term, and I’m not confused about any part of what it means. |
| 2 | I’m a little uncertain about what the term means, but I have a general idea. |
| 1 | I’m very uncertain about the term. I really don’t understand what it means. (p. 32) |
We discuss other methods for tracking students’ vocabulary knowledge in chapter 4. As described here, vocabulary notebooks are designed to capture students’ thinking about each term so they can revise and refine their understandings during steps 4, 5, and 6 of the six-step process.
Step 3: Ask Students to Construct a Picture, Symbol, or Graphic Representing the Term or Phrase
As explained previously, nonlinguistic processing deepens students’ understanding of terms and creates image-based information packets (imagens) in their brains. For example, consider a student who remembers seeing a live performance of Peter and the Wolf, an orchestral composition of a children’s tale that is typically narrated. The student has a mental picture of the concert hall with the orchestra fanned out on stage and the narrator of the piece standing next to the conductor, facing the audience, telling the story of Peter and his animal friends defeating the wolf. The student connects that image of a narrator with other narrators he has encountered. He remembers the voice of Nick in a movie version of The Great Gatsby that he saw. If his grandfather told him stories when he was little, he includes the sound of his grandfather’s voice, the smell of his pipe, and an image of the room or chair he sat in when telling stories. These are all examples of imagens, which should be recorded in some form in the student’s vocabulary notebook.
Teachers and students should recognize that different words may require different types of representations. Table 2.3 depicts five different ways terms can be represented nonlinguistically.
Table 2.3: Methods for Nonlinguistic Representation
Even with these five methods, some students may still have trouble creating nonlinguistic representations for terms, saying that they don’t know how to sketch or aren’t good at drawing. Others may try to overdraw terms, creating such detailed pictures that they lose sight of the term itself. Still others may feel like a description is enough and they don’t need a picture. Teachers can use several techniques to help these students. First, teachers can model appropriate sketches for vocabulary terms. This will help students see the appropriate level of detail to include in their pictures and also provide an opportunity for the teacher to explain the differences between drawing and sketching. Second, the teacher can provide examples of past students’ nonlinguistic representations for terms. Third, the teacher can allow students to discuss their ideas for nonlinguistic representations in groups before they work individually on their pictures. Finally, the teacher can help students look for images on the Internet that represent the terms. For instance, a student depicting the term time zone might print out a picture of the United States and color the states to represent the different time zones.
In summary, steps 2 and 3 are designed to deepen students’ knowledge of a term through multiple exposures. Students record their linguistic and nonlinguistic descriptions of the term in their vocabulary notebooks, where they can revisit them to clarify or add to their initial understandings as they become more familiar with the term.
Step 4: Engage Students Periodically in Activities That Help Them Add to Their Knowledge of the Terms in Their Vocabulary Notebooks
Steps 1, 2, and 3 are designed to be implemented in order, with the teacher describing, explaining, and exemplifying a term and students subsequently describing, explaining, and exemplifying the term on their own, both linguistically and nonlinguistically. Steps 4, 5, and 6 are less sequential. Each is an important element of the process described here, but it is not necessary to perform them in order. For example, step 4 involves activities that help students add to their knowledge of vocabulary terms, and step 6 involves games that allow students to play with terms. In some cases, students might play games with a word (step 6) before completing comparison activities with the word (step 4). This is completely acceptable. In fact, a teacher might use steps 4, 5, or 6 only once per week or once every two weeks. No matter how frequently or infrequently steps 4, 5, and 6 are employed, it is important for students to continue revising and adding to their vocabulary notebook entries as their knowledge of a word deepens and grows.
There are many activities that help students add to their knowledge of terms as directed in step 4. Some are very simple. For example, a teacher might ask students to say or write any words they think of when they hear a target word. When used orally, this is an excellent activity for small intervals of time, such as when students are waiting in line to go to lunch or recess or during the last minutes before it is time for students to change classes. Students can complete this activity as a class, in small groups, in pairs, or individually. The teacher should allow students to brainstorm related words for a specific period of time and then ask students to stop. If students have been saying words aloud, the last person to say a word then briefly explains how that word is related to the target word. If students have been writing individual lists of words, students could trade lists and ask their partners to explain any words that are unfamiliar or don’t make sense.
Other activities for augmenting students’ vocabulary knowledge could involve identifying similarities and differences or examining affixes and root words. Here we provide a number of activities for each.
Identifying Similarities and Differences
Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001) identified four strategies that students can use to identify similarities and differences: (1) comparing and contrasting, (2) classifying, (3) creating metaphors, and (4) creating analogies. Comparing and contrasting involves identifying attributes that are the same or different between two or more items or concepts. Classifying involves grouping like items or concepts into categories based on their attributes or characteristics. Creating metaphors involves finding connections between ideas or concepts that do not seem connected at a surface level. Finally, creating analogies involves describing the relationship between a pair of items or concepts by comparing the pair to another pair.
Comparing and Contrasting
When comparing and contrasting terms, students can think about ways that terms are similar and different by using sentence stems provided by the teacher. This sort of structure helps students both make substantive comparisons and compare terms logically. Following are a few examples:
_________ and _________ are similar because they both:
• _________
• _________
_________ and _________ are different because:
• _________ is _________, while _________ is _________
• _________ is _________, while _________is _________
These stems help students structure their thinking and clearly express their thoughts. Thus, a student might compare circle and sphere as follows:
Circles and spheres are similar because they both:
• Have circumferences, radii, diameters, and surface areas
• Have perfect symmetry
Circles and spheres are different because:
• A circle is two-dimensional, while a sphere is three-dimensional
• A circle does not have volume, while a sphere does have volume
In this case, the student found similarities between the measurements and symmetries and differences between the dimensions and volume.
Venn diagrams are another structure that can help students compare and contrast characteristics of two to three terms. For example, a student might compare adage to idiom as shown in figure 2.4.
Figure 2.4: Venn diagram comparing adage and idiom.
Note that in the Venn diagram, each characteristic under adage corresponds to a characteristic beneath idiom. So, the first characteristic involves the term’s specificity to a certain language, the second involves literal meaning, and the third involves veracity.
Similar to the Venn diagram is the double bubble diagram. Here, students compare two terms by identifying their shared and unique characteristics. For example, if a student was comparing the terms base 10 and base 60, he or she might create a double bubble diagram like the one shown in figure 2.5. Each term is placed in a bubble, one on the right and one on the left. Characteristics of each are written in the surrounding bubbles. Shared characteristics are placed between the two terms; unique characteristics are placed around the outside of each term. Then, lines are drawn to show which characteristics are unique and shared. The double bubble diagram in figure 2.5 indicates that both the base 10 and base 60 systems used finger counting methods and were used in ancient cultures.
Figure 2.5: Double bubble diagram.
Like the diagrams presented previously, the double bubble diagram is a structure that can help students make and organize substantive comparisons between two terms.
Sometimes students need to compare and contrast more than two terms at a time, however. In these cases, students can use a comparison matrix, which examines several items according to several attributes. Like the Venn and double bubble diagrams, the matrix structures students’ comparisons and helps them identify meaningful similarities and differences between terms. The matrix, however, has the added advantage of accommodating a larger number of terms for comparison. For example, the comparison matrix in table 2.4 shows how a student might compare the three terms argumentative, informative/explanatory, and narrative.
The student first fills in his or her observations about each term relative to each attribute in the matrix. For example, the student observed that the purpose of argumentative writing is to convince someone of something. Once each cell has been filled in, the student examines the matrix and draws conclusions about similarities and differences between the terms, which are recorded at the bottom of the chart.
Table 2.4: Comparison Matrix for Argumentative, Informative/Explanatory, and Narrative
Classifying
Classification activities help students group like terms or concepts into categories. For example, an ELA teacher asks her students to classify the following terms based on their characteristics: adage, fore-shadowing, hyperbole, idiom, metaphor, personification, proverb, simile, stanza, tone, and verse. While the teacher could ask students to create their own categories, she decides to provide categories such as Figurative Language, Structural Features, and Literary Techniques. One student sorts the words as follows.
Figurative Language: hyperbole, idiom, metaphor, personification, simile
Structural Features: stanza, verse
Literary Techniques: adage, foreshadowing, proverb, tone
Classification activities can fall anywhere on a continuum from structured to open-ended. If the teacher provides both the words to sort and the categories, then the task is fairly structured. If the teacher provides only the words, the task will be more open-ended. The most open-ended version of a classification activity would involve students identifying both the words to sort and the categories in which to sort them. For example, a high-school math teacher whose students have been studying functions might ask students to look at all the words they had recorded in their vocabulary notebooks, select the ones they thought were most important for the study of functions, and create a classification scheme for those words. This exercise could allow students to think about words in new ways. A student might select the math words he thought most directly applied to functions and then flip to the ELA or cognitive verbs section of his notebook and identify words from those subject areas (such as relationship or derive) as well. Including those words would influence the student’s choices about which classification categories were most appropriate. Whether structured or open-ended, the key to successful classification activities is prompting students to group words into categories.
Creating Metaphors
Creating metaphors involves identifying similarities and connections between words at a figurative, abstract, or nonliteral level. For example, the phrase “he is the light of my life” uses a metaphor to describe one who is beloved. While people often associate light with joy, happiness, and security, a person cannot literally be luminescent. Consider a fifth-grade math teacher who asks her students to create metaphors using the term common denominator. One student says, “Common denominators are the dating websites of math,” and explains that in the same way that common denominators make it easier to add fractions, dating websites make it easier for couples to pair up. Students should not only create metaphors but also explain why they grouped the two terms together. To prompt and facilitate this explanation, a teacher might use the following sentence stem:
_________ is/are _________ because _________.
For more complex metaphors, students can fill in a matrix. First, they identify specific characteristics of a term in the left column; then they state those characteristics more generally in the center column. In the right column, students look for a different term that also fits with the general characteristics described in the center column. For example, a student wants to create a metaphor using source. He completes the left and center columns of the matrix as shown in table 2.5. Then, he looks for a term that could be equated with source at an abstract level. The student decides to use the term character as the second term in the metaphor and fills in the right column of the matrix to explain his reasoning.
Table 2.5: Metaphor Matrix for Source
After completing a matrix like the one in table 2.5, the student decides to phrase his metaphor as follows: Characters are the sources of stories. To explain the abstract relationship, the student uses the general descriptions listed in his matrix.
Because metaphor activities ask students to examine the abstract or nonliteral elements of a term, they are an excellent way to help students deepen their vocabulary knowledge about words they know at a surface level.
Creating Analogies
To create an analogy, students must identify and describe a relationship between two items or concepts. For example, “Betty is to Jeff as oil is to water” implies that in the same way that oil repels water, Betty repels Jeff. This sort of analysis requires in-depth examination of the nuances of relationships between terms. There are several ways in which a teacher can prompt students to generate analogies. For example, an ELA teacher could provide the first term of each analogy pair and ask students to fill in the second term in each pair, as follows:
An adjective is to a _________ as an adverb is to a _________.
A student responds by saying, “An adjective is to a noun as an adverb is to a verb.” He might extend his answer by explaining that adjectival phrase and adverbial phrase could be substituted for adjective and adverb in the analogy.
Alternatively, the teacher could provide both terms in the first pair and ask students to create the second pair, as follows:
Prefix is to suffix as _________ is to _________.
A student responds by saying, “Prefix is to suffix as first names are to last names because first names come at the beginning of your full name and last names come at the end of your full name.” She then extends it by comparing a root word to a person’s middle name.
Another useful strategy is to ask students to label the relationship between two sets of terms. Visual analogy diagrams are useful for this purpose, as shown in figure 2.6.
Figure 2.6: Visual analogy diagram.
In figure 2.6, the student labeled the relationship described by the analogy “an adjective is to a noun as an adverb is to a verb” as descriptive. Another student might label the same relationship modifying or adding information.
Examining Affixes and Root Words
Understanding word parts and how words are constructed has been shown to have a correlation of 0.83 with vocabulary knowledge (Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003). As explained in chapter 1, correlations that are close to 1.00 indicate strong relationships between two variables. So, as students’ understanding of word parts and word construction increases, so does their vocabulary knowledge. Some (Adams, 1990) have cautioned against teaching word parts to students learning to read, because the segmentation of a word into syllables does not always match the segmentation of a word into word parts. For example, a student learning to read would probably try to segment the word information into syllables (in-for-ma-tion) to decode it. However, its morphological segmentation is different (in-form-ation), and this difference could be confusing to an immature reader. For confident readers who have reached a level of automaticity with decoding longer words, however, understanding roots and affixes can help them remember words they have learned and figure out the meaning of unfamiliar terms. Stahl (2005) explained,
A discussion of word parts should become an integral part of word-learning instruction. Discussions that include stories about word origins and derivations can stir interest in learning more about language—that is, build word consciousness. Stories that help children to see and understand how similarities in word spellings may show similarities in meaning, may solidify and expand their word knowledge. For example, the seemingly dissimilar words loquacious, colloquium, and elocution all come from the root word loq, meaning “to talk.” Knowing this connection may make it easier for children to remember the words. (p. 111)
There are three distinct types of word parts: prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Prefixes, which come at the beginning of a word, typically add to or change the meaning of the root word to which they are attached. Suffixes, which come at the end of a word, typically affect the root word’s part of speech. Collectively, prefixes and suffixes are referred to as affixes. Root words are often based on Greek or Latin and carry specific meanings.
Affixes
In 1989, Thomas White, Joanne Sowell, and Alice Yanagihara examined the words in The American Heritage Word Frequency Book (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971) to identify the most frequently used prefixes and suffixes in English. They found that the top twenty prefixes and suffixes accounted for 97–99 percent of all words with affixes (as shown in table 2.6). It is interesting to note that the three most frequently occurring prefixes are used in 51 percent of all prefixed words and the three most frequently occurring suffixes account for 65 percent of all words with suffixes.
Table 2.6: Frequently Occurring Prefixes and Suffixes
